


Be Your Dog

by Vera (Vera_DragonMuse)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, M/M, Punk, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 08:02:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1016131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vera_DragonMuse/pseuds/Vera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal Lecter sang like he was crawling inside of the audience to take them apart and rebuild them into his own image.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Be Your Dog

The door to Jack Crawford’s office was open. Will had hoped it would be closed. That would give him an excuse to walk back down the hall and maybe out of the building altogether. He could have avoided the entire exercise and gone back to his crappy apartment, returned to his life as a music history professor. A normal life. A sane life. 

He pushed inside. Jack hadn’t changed the office much in the last two years. Jack in his office hadn’t changed much either. He sat behind the broad desk, hands clasped and his eyes snapping to Will with laser focus. 

“Hello, Will. Have a seat.” 

Will sat. He didn’t take off his jacket. 

“Hello, Jack.” 

“Thanks for coming to see me. I’d hoped that you would. This job could be something special.” 

“What do you want me to cover? Another rising country star with a questionable past, but a bright redemptive future? Or some Beatles wannabe strumming their way up the charts?” 

“Neither.” Jack slid a folder across the desk. “Have you heard of this punk movement? 

“Of course. I’m off the beat, not dead. It’s sort of a backlash against free love.” Will didn’t open the folder. “Not the kind of thing your magazine usually covers.” 

“There is no usually. We go where the music is, you know that. Punk may be the next big thing and we can do a spread on it before anyone else. Get into the details.” 

“You can send a dozen other reporters to do that.” 

“A dozen reporters aren’t you.” Jack leaned in across the desk. “When you wrote that piece...it was magic. Broke the whole damn industry wide open and left everyone scrambling. You’re the best I’ve got.” 

“But you don’t have me.” 

“What else are you going to do over the summer? Come on. Earn a little cash, write a little. Get your groove back.” 

“It was a terrible groove. I don’t want that groove. That groove almost killed me.” 

“The band is called Devour.” Jack went on as if Will hadn’t said a word. “They’re starting to develop momentum, but they’re still low key enough that the agent is hungry for press. She contacted me.” 

“Alana Bell.” Will flipped the folder open. 

“How’d you know?” 

“Lucky guess.” It wasn’t. Will knew a lot of agents. Alana was one of the few that would go to a magazine that prided itself on killing careers. Jack’s magazine could make or break a band and if Alana thought she had something solid, she would take the risk. “So what’re you thinking? Embedding someone for this summer tour?” 

“Not someone. You.” 

“And if I’m not interested?” 

“Listen.” Jack held up a record, the jet black caught in the fluorescent light of the office. “Listen and then come back and tell me you’re not interested.” 

Will crept out of the office, head down, sneakers soundless in the halls. He drove home with the disc a void on the seat beside him. He wouldn’t listen. There wasn’t a need. The blessed silence of his home with the humid pants of his dogs were all he needed. 

Most people could listen to a record and just enjoy it. Will had met them, talked with them. They seemed to put on a record and then...do other things. It boggled him. Every time he caught wind of a new song, Will had to sit down. His eyes closed of their own volition and he got lost. He heard not just the song, but all of it’s component parts and where each of those parts traced back and back into the history of all music. 

His students called him ‘passionate’ and ‘insightful’ and ‘creepy’ in their evaluation forms. Sometimes he leafed through them and tried to make sense of what they saw. It wasn’t passion that drew him into music, but the inescapable draw of curiosity. Why this horn? Why that tempo? Who’s fingers slid up those keys? What were they hoping to evoke? What did it actually bring to the surface? 

When he wrote for Jack’s magazine, his articles had won awards and enemies by the score. 

The driveway drew him away from the main road, took him to the beloved isolation of his home. He walked the dogs, fed them and then himself. He graded papers for awhile, then picked up and discarded a few waiting novels. The record had made it inside, brooding on his coffee table. Every time he got up to fill a glass of water, it waited. 

‘Devour’ said the label in stark black letters. Will traced the band’s name. He wondered what the jacket looked like. Would it be stark or overwrought? Why hadn’t Jack given it to him along with the record? 

He set it back down and went to get another glass of water. The wind howled by outside, filling up his silence. The bed was already made. He could sleep, clear his mind and consider everything fresh in the morning. 

He could, but he couldn’t. Will curled in the blankets, but his eyes wouldn’t close. The wind whistled by. 

He got up slowly and approached the disc. Judiciously, he picked it up and set it onto his turntable. The volume wasn’t turned high, just a steady median sound that let him dissect in peace. 

 

“I want travel expenses.” Will stood in front of Jack’s desk, arms folded tight his chest. “I want my own hotel room, no sharing with the band. Same with transportation.” 

“That’s a lot of money.” Jack said blandly. 

“Is it?” Will stared tightly Jack’s desk calendar, cluttered with acronyms that made little sense to Will’s exhausted stare. 

“They want you for at least a month. Hotels alone-” 

“Don’t dicker with me. You want me, those are my conditions.” 

“You’re not a good negotiator.” Jack tapped a pen gently against the desk. “Ultimatums are a last resort.” 

“I went by the last resort two years ago.” Will gritted out. “Yes or no?” 

Two days later, Will was on a train sitting across from Alana Bell. She was as beautiful and distant as the moon just as he remembered her. Her legs were crossed at the ankle, her skirt barely showing knee, her notebook was open across her lap filled with her neatly slanting notes. 

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” She asked. 

“No.” He smiled weakly. “But someone should.” 

“They are unusual.” She glanced out the window. 

Will had listened to the album three times in it’s entirety. Once that first night when he sat nearly hypnotized in the dark, again before he went to see Jack to ensure he had heard what he thought he heard and one last time this morning before leaving. It had been tempting to play it again, but he knew it was time for the live version or the recording would forever be embedded in his mind and he would be unable to catch the true nature of the real thing. 

“When is their next performance?” 

“We should be arriving in time for tonight’s concert.” Her legs uncrossed, recrossed and he felt the brush of her panty hose against the rough fabric of his pants. “It’s all mid sized venues for now. A few smaller ones in between.” 

“You have your eye on the prize though.” 

“I do.” She ran a thumb over the bottom of her notebook. “But more importantly, so do they.” 

Will had a dossier in his lap, outlining exactly who ‘they’ were. But his own research (hunting through old magazines, talking to students with radical tastes, making phone calls to disused acquaintances willing to overlook a silence of years) had yielded that the band might have four members, but only one drove them forward. 

Hannibal Lecter, age unknown, had sprung from the rich soil of Eastern Europe. Some legends around him claimed a bloody escape from behind the Iron Curtain while others talked of a old money and older titles that still meant something in some places. Whatever the origin, Lecter had appeared on the music scene in the late sixties with another band ‘Red Dragon’. The sound had fallen harsh on hippie ears, but the growing discontentment with peace and love had already seeded new movements. Seeking out these darker niches, Lecter had flourished. Red Dragon fell away and left behind this new glistening beast. 

On his own, Lecter struck out to America and from the burgeoning punk scene had cherry picked the members of his new band. There was Tobias Budge, a bassist who’s dark thrumming infiltrated every song. Then there was Abel Gideon, a high strung keyboardist that Will found grating in places and deeply moving in others. But the two of them were disposable, forgettable ultimately. 

What made Devour bring Will out of retirement was the other two. Abigail Hobbs played drums as if she were running from the devil. Hannibal Lecter sang like he was crawling inside of the audience to take them apart and rebuild them into his own image. 

They were glorious and frightening. 

Will wanted to meet them with the kind of sweaty handed desperation he thought he had left behind with his teenage years. 

The train ran on time, delivering he and Alana onto a busy platform in a misting rain. The traffic snarled up on them, but time was apparently on their side. They arrived at the venue, a cigerrete smoked club, just as the warm up band left the stage. 

“And now, for your hungry ears,” a chubby man with wild hair took the mic, “I give you, Devour!” 

The crowd didn’t cheer. Not even a single strangled cry. They stood stock still and wide-eyed as sheep. 

“Brilliant ploy.” Alana whispered. “Hannibal has this whole thing about the importance of silence. Must be mostly devotees tonight.” 

Devour took the stage. Hannibal strode out first, unmistakable with the wide set of his shoulders. He wore a black t-shirt, ripped diagonal from shoulder to waist and held together with wide safety pins. His hair was slicked back, showing off the sharp planes of his face. For that first silent moment, he was alone on stage. His fingers curled around the mic, drawing it from it’s stand as he scanned the audience. 

“Good evening.” He purred and a girl in the audience let out a high, long moan. 

He started with a hum, a deep throated steady hum that crept under Will’s skin and raised every hair straight up. 

Abigail came on next. Her hair was shaved on one side of her scalp, the other half draped over her left eye. Her clothes swaddled her, enveloping fragile bones, but when she twirled her drumsticks it was with deceptive surety, a wink to the crowd. She started a hypnotic shimmering beat that lifted up Hannibal’s dark hum. Tobias and Abel filtered in, almost unnoticed, easing a melody under it. 

Will had heard punk. He liked it well enough, the vital screaming rawness of it. This wasn’t punk. It was something of vikings and very old souls, it was something of ritual and knives. It was wholly new. When Hannibal’s hum swelled into words, Will had to close his eyes against it. He listened with his skin and the soles of his feet. He felt the breath of some new beast breathing down the back of his neck. Waiting. 

“You should come meet them.” Alana shouted over the screaming adulation that followed the end of the set. 

“Hm?” Will roused slow from his other world, wakened as if from deep sleep. 

“Come meet the band!” She grinned, waving her hands, catching up his elbow. 

He let himself be led. They waded through a sea of black leather and piercings, Alana stopping occasionally to hold the hand of a fan and make empty promises. By the time they reached the back, Will itched with too many people wanting too many things. 

“Sorry!” A beefy guy that must be a bouncer said when Alana stepped behind the stage. “Had to get ‘em back to the hotel room quick. Some girl broke in back here and started making a scene.” 

“Of course.” Alana rolled her eyes. “Right. The hotel it is.” 

They took another taxi to the hotel and Will reminded himself firmly to get a rental in the morning. He an expense account and every intention of spending it dry. Jack owed him that much. The hotel was nicer than Will had expected, a notch above the dives he’d often been forced to room in to stay close to a band. 

“They got money coming in already?” 

“Enough.” 

He waited to get his key, sliding it like a talisman into his pocket. 

The elevator took them up and up. A suite then. Will adjusted his concept of how well Devour must be doing up another two notches. Perhaps the studio had actually scented what they might have on their hands and put some stock into keeping it. A rarity, but not impossible. 

“Here.” Alana set her key to the lock, then glanced up at him. “Okay?” 

He never knew why she bothered pausing just then, but in the years that followed it stuck with him. What would have happened if he’d said ‘no’? He imagines they would have walked away together. She would put him back in a cab, on a train. He would have gone home, taken his poor dogs off various people’s hands and put his small world easily back together. Another life. Another Will. 

“Yeah.” He said instead. 

The room held the peculiar sweat/vodka/hair product scent of a performer's den. The small living room was crowded with people, the usual entourage laughing and drinking. The couch was packed full, legs entwining and arms slung around shoulders. 

Hannibal sat apart from them, in an armchair set at a strange angle to the couch. He sat sideways, torso leaned on one arm and legs thrown over the other. Pressed up against the bottom of the armchair was Abigail. Her dark eyes took in the scene, but her lips were pressed firmly together in silence. 

“Hannibal!” Alana greeted him with wide arms. 

“The esteemable Alana.” He smiled at her, an efficient closed lip affair and didn’t rise. “A pleasure as always.” 

Her hug turned out to be for Abigail, who accepted it with stiff pleasure that barely released Alana at the end. 

“I’ve got someone for you.” Alana waved Will forward, cupped his elbow for a brief second to draw him closer. Into the inner circle. The rest of the crowd, other band members included, might as well have been on Mars. “This is Will Graham. He’s a report-” 

“For Jack Crawford’s magazine.” Hannibal had gained a sport jacket since leaving the stage, an obsidian thing that should have looked ridiculous over the ripped t-shirt. Instead it settled on the hard line of his shoulders like it had been created for that purpose. 

“You’ve heard of me.” 

“I’ve read your reviews.” Hannibal smile turned warmer. “You have an...evocative turn of phrase. A way of putting people just in their place.” 

“I write what I hear.” He shrugged, tucking his hands into his pockets. 

“And you hear more than most, don’t you?” 

“Maybe I just listen closer.” 

“Will has agreed to stay on for the rest of the door.” Alana cut in briskly. “Try to give him some interview time and decent quotes. Don’t tell him too much. Give him an inch and he’s been known to extract a mile.” 

“Don’t worry.” Abigail spoke for the first time, gazing up at Will with an unsettling serenity. “We know how to handle reporters.” 

Hannibal’s hand fell gently into Abigail’s hair. One long stroke as if she were a cat. Her eyes shuttered closed, a house unoccupied. 

“We’re happy to have you, Will.” Hannibal said softly. “I tend to wake early. A curse in this profession. If you would like to speak with me privately, breakfast is generally a good time. You have only to knock.” 

And with that, Alana was leading Will away. They had been dismissed apparently though Will could feel Hannibal’s eyes on him all the way out the door. 

 

Will remembered each breakfast with Hannibal in those first few heady weeks with stunning clarity. There had been six of them altogether, each different in character and flavor. Abigail was present twice, Alana once, but every time Hannibal had a knack at making seem as if they were alone together. 

“Will you write a lot about me?” Hannibal asked that first morning, pouring Will coffee from a silver pot. The hotel suite had a kitchen, apparently and Hannibal had made use of it. No continental breakfast for the likes of him. 

“I don’t find you that interesting.” Will said dryly. A musician’s ego was familiar territory to him and he had no interest in inflating it. 

“Yet.” Hannibal retorted, a spark of glee in his eyes. 

“Background first.” Will clicked a pen. 

“Not until we’ve eaten. I hate to spoil a good meal with too much chatter.” 

The food was excellent and Will settled with his notebook until the last bite had disappeared. 

“Where were you born?” 

“So invasive.” Hannibal sighed as if terribly put upon. “I propose a deal between us. You must answer every question you put to me.” 

“Why?” 

“Because if I’m to stand naked before you, it seems only fair you be willing to do the same.” 

“But that’s not how this works.” Will protested. 

It didn’t matter. It was how it worked with them. Of Hannibal’s childhood, Will gets meaningless facts and returns the same though it’s clear they share a well of despair that should remain untapped. 

“I was a medical student first.” Hannibal allowed, sipping at a glass of water. 

“What changed your mind about medicine?” 

“Too many patients.” A curl of a smile, a hint of humor that alighted in Will’s belly. “I prefer crowds to individuals most of the time. A personal failing.” 

“One we share. Though I don’t like crowds much either.” Will made an idle note. “I was nearly a cop.” 

“What happened?” 

“Apparently having a fake ID is considered a felony in some states.” Will shrugged. “I could’ve gotten the record sealed, it was a juvenile crime, but I’d started writing for a local newspaper while it got sorted out. I liked it better.” 

“Journalism over crime. Curious.” 

“Any more so than music over medicine?” 

“I know my own motivations.” Hannibal folded his napkin. “Yours are mysterious to me.” 

“Nothing mysterious. I like writing. They both involve observation. And then it turned out I had a knack with music.” 

“Far more than a knack. Your insights are unique.” 

“Crazy, some people say.” Will smiled. 

“They’re quite wrong. I don’t think I’ve ever met a saner man.” 

Will wasn’t sure what to make of that. He got used to the feeling around Hannibal. 

And then there was Abigail. Will wasn’t sure if he found her equally or somehow more beguiling than Hannibal though for utterly different reasons. Their talks never took place over food. Instead, Abigail preferred green places, hard to find on the road. She managed though. Little atriums in the center of steel grids, tiny breaths of fresh air gasped out of smog. 

“I grew up in the mountains.” She told him. Her voice was always hushed as if in confession. “My father was a hunter. I’d go out with him all the time.” 

“Were you good?” He asked. 

“Very.” She tilted forward, her hair sweeping away her expression. “I miss it sometimes. Not the shooting part, but the rest of it. Walking alongside him. Taking in the woods.” 

“I’m a nature lover too.” He admitted. “Though I lose sight of it sometimes.” 

“When we finish this,” she reached for his hand, her fingers deceptively strong around his, “you should come for a hike with me.” 

“Maybe.” He didn’t jerk his hand away, left it cool beneath hers. “Do you do that with Hannibal?” 

“Can you imagine?” She chuckled. “He’d ruin those fine steel toed boots of his.” 

“How did you two meet up? I just can’t imagine how it went.” 

“He was looking for my father.” Her laugh cut off as soon as it had begun. 

“Your father was a musician?” 

“A manager, once upon a time.” Her grip on his hand released finger by finger as if she had to peel herself away. “But Dad was dead by then. So Hannibal only had me. I played for him once and that was it. Hook, line, sinker.” 

Will almost told her that he was a fisher. Almost told her what the phrase meant to him. The catch of a mouth on a hook, the flopping breathless death on land. Almost. But instead he held his tongue and let her talk of other things. Deer and fresh fallen snow. 

 

“What about me, dear boy?” Gideon leaned in with a smile as Will walked past. “Don’t you have questions?” 

Will paused, looked the man over. 

“No.” He turned and went on walking. 

“That might have been unwise.” Hannibal raised an eyebrow as Will slid into the diner table beside him. 

“Was it?” Will glanced up, caught an acidic stare from Gideon. 

“You’ve injured his pride.” 

“I don’t waste my time with mirages. There’s nothing more to him than mirrors.” Will looked over the menu. “How long will you keep him?” 

“Why would I get rid of him?” 

“Because he’ll do something stupid and you’ll want to do it. There are other keyboardists that could do the same job.” 

“Oh? And what of my bassist?”   
“Same. Though it’ll take longer, I think.” 

“And my drummer?” Hannibal must’ve been leaning in too slowly for Will to notice because he was practically mouthing the words straight into his ear now. 

“She’ll stay the longest. You like her. You see yourself in her.” 

“Do I?” 

Will could feel Hannibal’s smile. 

“Yes.” 

“What about you, Will?” Hannibal’s hand was at the back of his neck. 

“I’m not yours to dispose of.” Will moved a fraction of an inch away, just enough to break the contact. “When this tour is over, then you never see me again.” 

“Never?” Hannibal was back in his own seat. “That’s unfortunate. I’ve grown to like your company.” 

 

The music never became dull or less hypnotic. Will even cleansed his palette, went to others shows along the way. Smoky jazz, strumming folk and a midnight mass weren’t enough to wipe away Devour’s sound. He heard it in the shower and in his dreams. The songs were insidious pests curled around his organs until his heart thudded along with Abigail’s drums. 

“You study musicians.” Hannibal said over their fifth breakfast, the sharp tines of his fork skewering a bit of sausage. “But do you bother to create it?” 

“If this is the old line about critics or teachers-” 

“No. I believe you can. That’s why I’m asking. Why don’t you?” 

“I’m not that good.” 

“I don’t believe you.” 

“Well, it’s the truth.” Will lied. 

“What else is the truth, Will? Why haven’t you tried?” 

“Because I don’t want to lose myself.” 

“Music is about setting yourself free, not getting lost.” 

“Not for me.” Will drank his coffee down, tongue burning. “I just...disappear.” 

The guitar appeared on his bed that night. It was a gorgeous one, all angles and glossy black paint. Hannibal was ostensibly the lead guitarist though his singing usually took too much of Will’s attention for him to notice. But the guitar he knew. How Hannibal had gotten into his room was another mystery. 

But the guitar was here. Unplugged and silent in it’s offering. He ran a hand over the paint, left behind a smudge of a fingerprint. One finger to the string and it sang to him. It made promises it couldn’t keep. 

“No.” He told it. 

By the end of the night, his fingers bled onto the strings. The callouses once built up had gone soft in the intervening years. He handed the stained instrument back to Hannibal in the busy crowd of midafternoon. 

“Thanks for the lend.” 

“It was no lend.” Hannibal kept his hands by his side, refusing the return. “It’s for you, Will. It’s always been for you.” 

 

Two more nights and Will was lost. 

“Come here.” Hannibal cajoled, calling him from the stage. He held out his hand. “Come and play for our people.” 

Abigail’s relentless beat slowed. It ran under a humming Hannibal note. Someone pressed the guitar into Will’s hands and he was propelled by unseen hands. 

“I haven’t practiced.” He mumbled, but the excuse was lost too far from microphones and ready ears. 

“You know all the songs.” Hannibal’s hand fell to the dip of Will’s back, the thumb nail riding the line of his jeans. “Play for me, Will.” 

“No.” Will settled the guitar over his hips. His fingers fell into place. 

“Play.” Hannibal commanded and his hum began again. 

Will knew that hum so well, but now it had renewed power. He could feel the strong vibration through the thin fabric of his t-shirt. It thrummed through him. The first chord seemed to ring out without him. 

As it always had, the music consumed him. His id went missing and he thought about nothing at all. He didn’t come back to himself until he was on the tour bus, crammed in on a small bed with a blanket over him. Sweat dripped into his eyes, blinding him and his throat was thickly coated with bile. Hannibal kneeled beside the bed, one hand tangled in Will’s hair. 

“You did well.” Hannibal whispered. “So well.” 

 

The last breakfast of the tour, Hannibal held Will’s legs trapped between his own under the table. They ate in languid quiet and Will’s head was full of song. 

“You’ll come with us back to New York.” Hannibal said softly. “Stay in my apartment. I think you’ll like it.” 

“My dogs.” Will surfaced with a slow blink. 

“We will find good homes for them and maybe one or two of the best can come with us. There’s room. I want to do another album. Go on tour again while the iron is hot.” 

“It’s hot.” Will sank down again, the music covering his head. “The fire is burning.” 

“You’ll make a good lyricist.” Hannibal smiled and there were points to his teeth that Will had never seen before. “Eat your bacon.” 

Will ate and listened. Listened to the world breaking.


End file.
